If you were, you know, living your lives, you've probably missed it, but old fires are burning brightly once again: there's somewhat of a falling-out going on between KDE and GNOME, with Canonical siding squarely with... KDE. The issue seems to revolve around GNOME's lack of collaboration, as explained by KDE's Aaron Seigo.

GNOME have collaborated with KDE but just because they don't like so called standards (not actual standards) just a place where so called standards are added, doesn't mean they have to.

Oddly, this has largely become Gnome's default position over the last decade when it comes to awkward home truths about Freedesktop. I think it's also been established that they haven't collaborated as much as they like to portray to everyone.

You're also missing the point here. It's certainly their prerogative to do that, but when you talk with people and find common ground and come to some agreement about something, and then turn around, do the opposite and then claim that talk and agreement never happened then you can expect to be called out on it.

This crap has been happening for a decade now and it's hurt all of us using free desktop software.

I think Canonical have sweetened the pot by using Qt, yet ironically Aaron doesn't agree with Canonical CLA, which was drawn up without any "collaboration".

Aaron has been consistently critical of Canonical over some of the things they have done, including this, over many years. There is nothing 'ironic' about this nor is there any double standards going on here as you're probably trying to imply.